Partners in the Altar

Exodus 24: 3-8; Psalm 116; 1 Cor 10: 14-21; Mark 14: 12-16, 22-36. 

From the moment of the Cathedral’s gracious invitation to be part of this very special occasion, I have thought my first line will be...

“I don’t know whether to be overwhelmed or underwhelmed…” and it has stayed with me so I am going to work with it awhile.

Starting with overwhelmed is easy to relate to, and is the right thing to do – today is an historic, wonderful occasion in the story of the Anglican Communion, not only in Australia, but in the whole Communion.  Kay Goldsworthy, in a few hours time, will be consecrated as Bishop in the Church of God, and so begins a new era of formal leadership in the church, and Australian society.  It is a day of celebration, of joy, of dancing, and of definitely feeling overwhelmed,  that the story of God and God’s people is at this point in story today. 

For those who have over many years persisted and journeyed with the quest for full and equal ministry of men and women in the Anglican Church, today is certainly an overwhelming day.  Perhaps the image is more atune to a “flowing over” day – flowing over with joy and fulfilment, as well as the release of pain and fatigue.  We are all very aware that this journey has indeed included, and continues to include, pain and struggle as together all viewpoints seek the will and word of God.

It is indeed appropriate and right that we honour the women, and men, who have brought today into being. I am very conscious that I stand here now with gratitude to those who have enabled God’s call on baptismal lives to be fulfilled. 

So perhaps now to explore that sense of being “underwhelmed”  seems inappropriate.  But, while staying with your joy, the context of the world is always vital in discerning God’s Spirit in the world. 

My feeling of “underwhelmed” comes in two ways – firstly, in the reality that the event of tonight, and in Melbourne in six days time, is right.  It is a right thing that is happening, it is a natural progression of theology and history in the ordination of women, and men, in God’s church.  So, let’s get on with it, in this righteousness. 

But the feeling of underwhelmingness has also come in what seems a very low-key approach by the world the church is part of, this Australian society.  Mind you, I make that comment in regard to the media response following the historic decision last October from General Synod.  The Australian newspaper had a paragraph somewhere in the middle of the paper; The Courier Mail a little bigger, but really both only passing comments.

Is everyone aware of how significant this is, I thought?  To make sure, I emailed local ABC radio presenter Spencer Howson this week, pointing out that on Thursday evening something quite important was happening…he assured me, both in return email and on radio the next morning, that he was sure the ABC and media would cover the event as and after it happened.  Well, we will know that tomorrow morning… 

But you know, the journalistic approach is the real approach in many ways because the media is really only interested in the happening itself.  Not the background battles, and the screeds of theory and theology, nor the legal arguments and discussions, all of which have happened over many decades.  The story that appeals, and sells, is the one where a photograph of a fellow human being is involved in an event that is a human story.  Nothing brings home the truth or reality of what is really happening than the invitation into the human story. 

As we pray for the people of Burma and China, in the aftermath of huge natural disasters, the tragedy becomes heartfelt as we witness in the media the stories of a son dying in a mother’s arms, of children been rescued after days of burial, of the scenes of such destruction it looks like the end of the world. And we also read the dispatches from ABM, and become part of what is happening “on the ground”.    It is then we become part of shared humanity – the media and immediate communication is forcing our involvement from statistics of death and destruction, into the muddy, traumatised lives of what is really happening. 

Christ’s call on our lives, though, is even more than sharing humanity – it is to take on, as he did, full humanity.  To share humanity means we can empathise, we can become emotionally involved, we can respond with ethical and righteous action.  The world is responding to these recent natural disasters with a great sharing of resources and care; many are indeed loving their neighbour. 

The involvement Christ asks us into is to actually share his body and to partake of humanity in the same way he does.  It is to become so intimately involved with God’s creation that we not only feel part of the whole, but we are being part of the whole.  We cannot be observers, looking on, looking in.  We are each called to become part of the divine-making of this world... 

This is the dilemma, of course, when trying to articulate the divine and the mystery of God…we get caught up in words that can only come a little way to exploring the reality of God.  The celebration of Corpus Christi, Christ’s body in the holy Eucharist, is at the heart of the mystery we are invited into. 

And it is no coincidence that this celebration of Corpus Christi comes close on the heels to Trinity Sunday which comes close on the heels to the festival of Pentecost.  We are caught up in the whirl of the mystery of God as Spirit as God’s presence in this world.  In that great whirl of Creator God, the resurrected and living Christ and the dynamic flame and wind of the Spirit, we are part of the whirl that has developed into tomes of doctrine and discussion of the mystery of God - as Trinity, as unseen and yet known, of power and force beyond human comprehension.   And yet, and yet, in that great whirl,  we come to settle on a humble cup, and the basic food of humanity, bread.

Jesus said to his friends, and all of us, on his last night before his death,

As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.  The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

To create the living memory of this oneness, Christ practised the very human act of hospitality.  Let us break bread together, he invited.  Let us share the cup of wine together, he said.  A simple meal in many ways, and yet in the context of the great events of his life, death and resurrection, has become the pivot to Christ’s call on our lives.  Because sharing the bread and wine has to be always with the living, resurrected Christ and is always therefore an act of love.  We claim God’s love as we claim Christ’s presence, and in our claiming, God claims our response as acts of love also.

The action of faith in sharing the sacrament, the bread and wine, is that we believe and know with God that all shall be well.  And all manner of things shall be well.  This is the partnership God calls each of us, and the church, the people, as a whole, into.  We are continuing God’s covenant with creation through a meal; how very human, how very divine.

And how overwhelming.  That we are indeed the Body of Christ in the world, and that God needs us be in that partnership for the kingdom to come. 

My friends, there is nothing underwhelming about this night at all.  We are celebrating a part of God’s story in the “best practice” way we know how to celebrate.  We are gathering around God’s holy table, as the Body of Christ, and we are partaking in the ultimate act of love of all time and history.  We are part of the most overwhelming action of creation; sharing God’s love together, to take God’s love into the world.

We join with the Church of God in celebration this night; Kay Goldsworthy’s words last week when I spoke to her shared a sense of the goodness of God.  We and all of creation are part of a great story, a good story.  Let us share that goodness of God together, and carry that goodness into God’s world.   Amen.